Edith Wharton's dialogue with realism and sentimental fiction

1. Economy and excess: an introduction

2. "I did love him, I did care": sentimental and ironic voices in Fast and Loose

3. Life and fiction: the dangers of literary taste

4. Realist or sentimental writer? Fast and Loose remembered and Edith Wharton's rite of passage

5. The triumphant plasticity of The House of Mirth

6. The Glimpses of the Moon: the novel The House of Mirth is not

7. The illegitimate excess of motherhood in "The Old Maid," "Her Son," and "Roman Fever"

8. Defying economies: sentimental fiction revisited in The Mother's Recompense

Conclusion, or a happy union?